E-mail, short for “electronic mail” and often abbreviated to email, is a store and forward method of composing, sending and receiving messages over an electronic messaging communication system. The term email applies to both an internet-based e-mail system utilizing Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) protocols and an intranet-based e-mail system often within a single organizational structure utilizing X.400 protocols for internal e-mail service supporting workgroup collaboration. Email predates the inception of the internet.
MIT first demonstrated the Compatible Time Sharing System (CTSS) in 1961 which allowed multiple users to log into a computer (such as the IBM 7094) from designated remote terminals to store/retrieve files from a centralized data storage medium. Email messaging started around 1965 as a way for multiple users of a single time-sharing mainframe computer to communicate amongst themselves. Email messaging was extended to a networked computing environment to enable users to send/receive messages between different computer systems.
As the proliferation of emails occurred with the growth of the Internet, the number of unsolicited email messages grew as well. There are systems and methods known in the art for filtering emails containing spam, or explicit images, viruses, and the like. One method which filters emails using a spam detection server is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,287,060 entitled System and Method for Rating Unsolicited E-Mail.
Aside from spam detection system and methods known in the arts, email continues to proliferate as a well established means of written communication between diverse peoples. Millions of legitimate emails are sent and received each day for business and personal communication. Currently there are no methods for rating a sender's email based on the quality of the email itself, as determined by the receiver, as a means of providing feedback to the sender. For instance, if a user continually sends poorly written emails containing numerous spelling errors, they may not realize that their emails are being viewed unfavorably by receivers and thus, without feedback, may not learn to change the way they draft their emails. Such changes may be, for instance, learning to consistently run a spellcheck program on the text of their emails before sending the message. In another example, a sender might not normally provide adequate or sufficient information in their emails on the topic at hand and thus never realise, without feedback, that the receiver tends to view emails sent by that sender unfavorably. Perhaps the sender has a tendency to include irrelevant links which the email receiver doesn't find particularly useful or helpful, or when sending an email to one recipient, the sender may copy in a long list of others who did not really need to read/review a particular email. Without feedback from the email receiver, a sender may never realize that a particular receiver they send emails to tends to view emails from them unfavorably. Thus, the sender may never correct problems receivers are having with their emails without the issue being raised separately. Presently, the only method by which an email receiver can provide feedback to a sender regarding various characteristics of the email itself such as quality or usefulness or helpfulness, etc., is to draft a reply email and send that to the receiver either praising the email received for its content or explaining why such an email was not useful.
What is needed in this art is an email rating system wherein overall ratings given to email senders by various email receivers are stored globally and an overall rating score based on ratings given email senders can be readily determined. Mechanism are also needed by which email receivers can review historical rating scores given by other email receivers. This is especially important for intra-office email communications within a large corporation where the problem of sending or replying to email using large distribution lists can result in a large number of un-necessary emails being received by individuals within the corporation.
Accordingly, what is needed in this art is a sophisticated email rating system and methods which enables email receivers to rate a sender's email and enable the receiver to provide a rating to the sender as feedback.